New Music – Page 7 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Subaqua’s Urgent Post-Punk Single “What a Bliss” Imagines a Future When the Psychic Weight of Patriarchal Culture is Gone

Subaqua imbues “What a Bliss” with a great sense of urgency and exhausted frustration at the inequality of society as we know it. The title refers to how it must be wonderful to not have to walk at night and having to be extra cautious, to be out in public in general and not draw unwanted attention immediately just for being female. And to have one’s natural personality and authentic self being picked apart for its arbitrary value in a patriarchal cultural conception of gender and the “proper” role of anyone and everyone. After decades of so-called progress it’s an ambient weight on the psyche for women and female-presenting people even today and with the upswing of the normalization of misogyny operating completely in the open of recent years it certainly has to be something that anyone with a sense of humanity hopes we can outgrow sooner than later. Musically the guitar and tenor of the vocals are reminiscent of Sonic Youth’s embrace of melody and discordant sounds equally and of Versus whose gift for the left field change-up in pace and tone can be heard here as well. Listen to “What a Bliss” on Spotify and follow Subaqua at the links below.

Subaqua on Facebook

Subaqua on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S6E03: The Builders and the Butchers

The Builders and the Butchers, photo by Tari Gunstone

The Builders and the Butchers is a folk rock/punk band from Portland, Oregon that formed in 2005 among friends and musicians who found themselves coming to the Rose City separately from Anchorage, Alaska. The group in its early days performed street shows completely unplugged. But eventually the group plugged in but not before establishing itself as a lively group of performers whose songs began as lyrics written by guitarist and singer Ryan Sollee. The group built a regional and then national and international following in underground music for its commanding live show and lyrics that always delved into subjects of the current human condition combining personal issues with social commentary. Now with its new full-length, its seventh, No Tomorrow (out April 2, 2026 on vinyl, digital download and streaming via Bandman Recording Co.) The Builders and the Butchers offer both a critique of the prevailing socio-economic order and a message of hope in basic human connections and our capacity to experience joy and to create in spite of failing systems and political leaders, in spite of the machinations of the powerful and the wealthy whose influence really only exists with our collective consent. The band’s storytelling with music has always been vivid and meaningful but with the new record it is reaching a new peak in its songwriting.

Listen to our interview with Ryan Sollee on Bandcamp and follow The Builders and the Butchers at the links below.

badmanrecordingco.com

thebuildersandthebutchers.com

The Builders and the Butchers on Facebook

The Builders and the Butchers on Instagram

The Builders and the Butchers on YouTube

Sunken Cages’ Electro-Acoustic Single “Drum and Flowers” is Like an Industrial Song Rooted in the Sounds and Sensibilities of the Global South

Sunken Cages, photo by Ed Marshall Photography

For “Drum and Flowers” Sunken Cages seems to have employed a hybrid production style to match the synthesis of musical ideas and styles. At first and throughout it sounds like something recorded to a cassette but put through modern production software. It brings together organic drums, synth sequences employed with the sensibility of organic percussion and lo-fi distortion to give the whole song a gritty and textural quality that contrasts well with the beatmaking. It’s like an industrial song if that music emerged from the global south rather than the UK, Europe and North America. The almost orchestral arrangement of drums truly sets it apart from possible obvious influences and in utilizing ancient sound sources with current technology and methodology in recording and production it hits the ears as deeply familiar yet fresh, new and celebratory. Listen to “Drum and Flowers” on YouTube and follow Sunken Cages aka Ravish Momin at the links below. The new album
Neram Pularumbol (As the Dawn Breaks) is out on Mhorka Records on August 7, 2026.

ravishmomin.com

Sunken Cages on Instagram

Sunken Cages on Bandcamp

Bajune Tobeta and Christian Fennesz Open a Passage to More Meditative Emotional Spaces With Tranquil Ambient Modern Classical Piece “After the Silence”

Bajune Tobeta, photo courtesy the artist

“After the Silence” eases into your consciousness with a gentle background drone and delicate motes of town seeming to drift by like snowflakes. Bajune Tobeta’s nearly abstract piano carries elements of melody while low end strings resonate somewhere in the sonic depth of field. Amid these layers of sound are contributions from Christian Fennesz but who can fully say where one musicians offerings and layers are fully distinct from the other without knowing exactly who played what. It doesn’t matter. The net effect is one of expert layering of sounds to create greater collective harmonies with a textural element that enhances the tranquil energy of the piece. Both artists worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto with sensibilities that blend those of electronic music, contemporary classical and ambient and this track from Tobeta’s forthcoming EP Anechoic (out August 14, 2026) promises a longer work with cinematic resonances that tap into the human mind’s capacity for transcending the noise and activity of the present moment into a spaces of meditative peace even if only for fleeting moments but enough to gain perspective on what can often overwhelm a person in the usual state of mind. Listen to “After the Silence” on YouTube and follow Bajune Tobeta at the links provided.

bajune.com

Bajune Tobeta on Facebook

Bajune Tobeta on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S6E02: Anne Richmond Boston

Anne Richmond Boston, photo by Jason Thrasher

Anne Richmond Boston was an early and current member of Atlanta-based New Wave/jangle pop band The Swimming Pool Q’s. As a vocalist and keyboard player, Boston was in the group in time for playing opening slots for Devo and Police in the late 70s. The Q’s were a staple in the college rock world of the 80s with Boston highlighted as a powerhouse singer with the band. She left the group in 1987, 5 years before its 1992 split (reuniting in 1998), and in 1990 released his first solo album The Big House of Time. The follow up I Should Be Happy was recorded with contributions from musical luminaries like Terry Adams (NRBQ), Marti Jones, Syd Straw, David Barbe (Sugar, Mercyland), Billy Conway (Morphone), Bob Elsey (The Swimming Pool Q’s), Michael Lorant (Indigo Girls) among others. But the record was shelved for reasons not even clear to Boston either. Thanks to friend Clay Harper over thirty years later Boston remixed eight of the 12 original songs recorded and added seven for a 2025 release on vinyl, CD and digital. The album sounds perfectly in line with the current era with the kind of songwriting that recalls classic pop, Laurel Canyon folk rock and the kind of art folk pop one might associate with Joni Mitchell. Boston sounds confident and soulful singing songs that seem to be about existential crises before that became a term used to describe a state of mind in which one grapples with life pressures and a sociopolitical climate that doesn’t support anyone’s best life. When writing the songs Boston likely had no idea it would be a perfect record for the 2020s while simultaneously capturing the mood of the early 90s as well.

Listen to our interview with Anne Richmond Boston on Bandcamp and follow the singer/songwriter/graphic designer/visual artist at the links below.

annerichmondboston.com

Hissuae’s Warmly Cinematic “Mayfly/Something Divin” is a Song About Transcendent Love and Desire

Hissuae, photo by Stephen Trutwin/Strut Photography

Hissuae brings an orchestral, stage musical sensibility to “Mayfly/Something Divine.” The songs flow into each other. Both are grounded in cinematic piano work and the artist’s warmly ethereal vocals with which she imbues songs about love and desire with a transcendent quality. Musically it sounds like something written for stage drama but deemed too strong and independent a work for such a context. The bursts of keyboard work and the extended structures in the song are reminiscent of something from the first couple of Tori Amos records in which that songwriter sounds like someone really working something out in her mind but finding the vehicle for that emotional work in the physicality of playing piano and its potential for elegant expression and a broad and nuanced tonal range which also highlights Hissuae’s own versatility as a singer able for which wide musical spaces and dynamic sweeps are required. Listen to “Mayfly/Something Divine” on Spotify or one of the other streaming/purchase links on Hissuae’s DistroKid account.

Hissuae on DistroKid

J’cuuzi’s Genre Bursting Psychedelic Post-Punk Single “Greasy Comb” Fuses the Ominous and the Otherworldly

When “Greasy Comb” starts you might think J’cuuzi is doing a lo-fi cover of “Edge of Seventeen” mixed with Sparks. But both impressions fade when the song picks up speed and the bass line waxes more funky and the vocals come in with ominous tones and a second set of vocals, or the first, processed as though through a vocoder. As the song progresses like a mutant post-punk song born of a mix of !!! and Black Moth Super Rainbow it swings into a nearly industrial beat with tracers of distorted, glitched out, melodic vocals as notes. Then the song’s layers of sound drop out into the creeping vocals spare percussion for a moment. The effect is psychedelic and like the band listened to a lot of Tran Am’s 2000 album Red Line. Live the band makes its own outfits and makes a performance art presentation of the music and even the recorded output is an embodiment of a willingness to push beyond genre limitations and standard music forms and structures. Listen to “Greasy Comb” on YouTube and follow J’cuuzi at the links below.

J’cuzzi on Instagram

“All on Black” is evrshde’s Deeply Moody Downtempo Song of Solidarity for Those Suffering Through Dark Times of the Psyche

“All on Black” finds evrshde in a fully somber mood. Like a brooding combination of the darker end of Fiona Apple and the more piano-driven side of Nine Inch Nails but infused with a downtempo jazz energy. There is a great spaciousness to the song even as it sounds like the late night musings of someone who felt like they took a lot of risks and none of them feel like they paid off and it’s beyond bitterness and rallying to do better in the future. It’s the sound of feeling that moment of utter defeat completely because to do otherwise would be dishonest and an excuse for false hope leading to delusional behavior. It’s a hard place to be but the song and its ethereal synth melody drifting through personal darkness with the weight of yes personal demons but those fed on a sense of crushing failure compounded by the knowledge that being who you are with your own foibles is what lead here. But then what? The song implicitly puts that question out there and leaving any ultimate conclusions what comes next. The line “The pain’s the only reason you know you’re still alive” is most telling for anyone that has sunk that deep into murky psychological recesses and worse and struggled to come out of it because that level of depression doesn’t feel like pain but a seemingly endless nothingness, a personal emotional nullification and the capacity to still feel something at all is a reminder that you’re still around and often it’s just getting through these seemingly hopeless expanses of spiritual grayness is matter of having patience and doing regular life activities that might in the moment feel meaningless. The song thankfully doesn’t sound like a reflection of that headspace so much as expresses a solidarity with anyone who might also be similarly suffering. Listen to “All on Black” on Spotify and follow evrshde at the links below.

evrshde on Facebook

evrshde on Instagram

Bad Flamingo Expands Into Sultry, Synth-Infused Dream Pop on “Velvet”

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo continues its streak of musical evolution and surprise with its latest single “Velvet.” Not only is there an enigmatic, noir video with grainy visuals like something captured in the 90s on Super-8 or DV but for this song the duo introduces more full use of synth/keyboards to create mood, texture and an emotional resonance that is both reflective, romantic and sultry. The cascading keyboard figure and the spare percussion subtle bass work coupled with vocals that go far wider than the band has typically gone in the past from vibrant lows to soaring highs like Martha Davis from The Motels. It’s more like a dark dream pop New Wave song than some of the more gritty blues pop of a good stretch of the band’s earlier songs yet it preserves the band’s gift for making love sound like a deliciously forbidden but pure and beautiful thing all at once. Watch the video for “Velvet” on YouTube and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.

badflamingomusic.com

Bad Flamingo on Facebook

Bad Flamingo on Instagram

New Wolves’ Cinematic Folk Single “We Are Crowds” is an Assertion of the Importance of Our Analog, Individual Identities in the Flood of the Techno-Oligarch Agenda

The spare acoustic guitar figure and percussion that introduces New Wolves’ “We Are Crowds” is a fascinating contrast with the falsetto vocals that almost sound more processed than they already are. Like intimate folk and a futuristic ghostly figure working together with some minimal synth flourishes entering the soundscape later in the song. In that way it feels like a cinematic composition almost more than a song with the way the elements sync together and interact. The song is a creative take on the natural desire of the individual to maintain a coherent identity and to stand out in a world where technocratic aspects of society seem to work to undermine the significance of individual lives and perspectives and unique personalities and impose an interchangeability of people into essential insignificance. But the refrain of the song “I want to live” isn’t merely about survival but really living and to embrace what that means for each of us and not as a statistic in an algorithm in which only the oligarchy has actual agency. It’s not an aggressive song, in fact it is gentle in its energies, but it is a song about resistance to the process of making the bulk of us anonymous and, to employ an older parlance, cogs in a world machine. After all, all collectives are comprised of individuals who should value their own existence and unique contribution to the whole. Listen to “We Are Crowds” on Spotify and follow New Wolves at the links provided.